Objective: To create a faster and more reliable method of characterizing porous media

Outcome: A Python application with a wealth of analysis/display features for researchers

Skills: Python

While working at the Hixon Lab, some graduate students and I became dissatisfied with the state of pore analysis in the field of tissue engineering. Negative spaces in cell scaffolds are critical for cell migration/differentiation, but the analysis seen in literature is often simplistic. We set out to create a simple but powerful tool to more easily and repeatably characterize porous media.

This tool became known as PoreVision (pun intended). It will accept an image of a porous medium, such as an SEM image of a cryogel or electrospun material, and analyze the pores on that cross-section. It has a range of useful features and options to facilitate analysis.

I wrote this entire program, entirely in Python for ease of use by other researchers. The aforementioned grad students provided valuable feedback from a researcher's perspective. This was by far the largest Python project I've completed, and I began to run up against my lack of software development knowledge as its size and scope exceeded that of the simpler scripts I am used to writing.